Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera

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On the face of it, Elmer
Gantry’s Velvet Opera should have been a shoo-in for success. A popular, dynamic live act who were equally
at home in the studio, their early recordings were bursting with wit,
intelligence, melody, style and, perhaps more than anything else, a sense of
fun.

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The sole album to be made
by the original line-up, Elmer Gantry’s
Velvet Opera was one of the most original and consistently entertaining
albums to emerge from the British psychedelic scene. The band also cut a couple of hugely
commercial singles – and yet, somehow, the glittering prizes eluded them (although
Elmer did subsequently score a hit as the lead singer on Stretch’s ‘Why Did You
Do It’, while rhythm section Richard Hudson and John Ford would later flourish
in the Strawbs before branching out on their own) .

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This definitive release of
that self-titled 1968 album adds their three contemporaneous singles (including
the minor hit ‘Flames’, an EGVO song that the embryonic Led Zeppelin included
in their live set), various studio outtakes (such as their title song to the
little-known 1967 Swinging London horror movie short Talk Of The Devil) as well as hitherto-unreleased early demo
versions of ‘Flames’ and ‘Salisbury Plain’.

1.INTRO2.MOTHER WRITES3.MARY JANE4.I WAS COOL5.WALTER SLY MEETS BILL BAILEY6.AIR7.LOOKIN’ FOR A HAPPY LIFE8.FLAMES9.WHAT’S THE POINT OF LEAVING10.LONG NIGHTS OF SUMMER11.DREAM STARTS12.REACTIONS OF A YOUNG MAN13.NOW SHE’S GONE

When it came to tough, snarling, mod-into-freakbeat sounds, legendary mid-Sixties act the Sorrows had few peers. Formed in Coventry, the band was signed by producer/A&R man John Schroeder to the Piccadilly label in late 1964. In the space of little more than a year, they cut a superb album as well as a clutch of menacing, thrillingly essential 45s, including the iconic Take A Heart (the band s only chart success) and its equally incendiary follow-up, You've Got What I Want .

Featuring a dazzling 16-page booklet that contains previously unpublished photos, new liner notes and quotes from band members Don Fardon and Wez Price, You've Got What I Want is nothing less than pure sonic overload from one of the most dynamic garage bands of the era...

Now widely considered
to have been one of the finest groups to emerge from the British psychedelic
pop scene, Kaleidoscope signed to the Fontana label in the epochal year of
1967. Over the next couple of years,
they issued two magnificent albums, Tangerine
Dream and Faintly Blowing, as
well as a quintet of vibrant, inventive, highly commercial singles.

Somehow,
though, they failed to achieve the glittering prizes that everyone predicted
would be theirs. Frustrated by their
lack of success, and with a heavier musical climate taking hold, they ended the
decade with a change of name to Fairfield Parlour and a new deal with
progressive rock label Vertigo.

But, as singer and lyricist Peter Daltrey
observed at the end of Kaleidoscope’s debut album, the children stayed children,
and they lived in their dreams.
Undoubtedly the definitive Kaleidoscope package, Further Reflections assembles the group’s entire recorded legacy
for the Fontana label under one roof for the first time. Relax your eyes, for after all, we can but
share these minutes...PRESS:-"a double-disc set of psychedelia that bristles with period charm, and generally manages to remain on the right side of indulgent". Music Week, 29/06/2012

"Bringing together Kaleidoscope's two Fontana albums, Tangerine Dream and Faintly Blowing, plus all five of the group's singles, this is the first time their entire output has come under one roof".Mick Houghton (Uncut - July 2012)

John’s Children were the quintessential cult 60s Mod/Psych band, controversial, sharply dressed and subsequently the stuff of legend.

The band were fronted by Andy Ellison (later with Jet and Radio Stars) and boasted Marc Bolan within their ranks during their short life.

A STRANGE AFFAIR – for the first time – boasts the entire John’s Children output between 1966 and 1970.

The package includes: * Two singles for EMI’s Columbia label: ‘The Love I Thought I’d Found’ and ‘Just What You Want – Just What You Get’. * Four singles for The Who’s label Track Records: ‘Desdemona’, the legendarily withdrawn ‘Midsummer Night's Scene’, ‘Come And Play With Me In The Garden’ and ‘Go-Go Girl’. * Their mock-live album Orgasm! which was belatedly issued on US label White Whale in 1970. * Andy Ellison’s subsequent solo singles ‘It's Been A Long Time’ (Track), ‘Fool From Upper Eden’ (CBS) and ‘You Can't Do That’ (SNB). * Three tracks by pre-John’s Children band The Silence. * A raft of rare and previously unissued alternative versions and mixes.

The 2-CD set has been compiled with help from Andy Ellison. Their manager Simon Napier-Bell will also be contributing to the detailed sleeve-notes, which are based around excerpts from Ellison’s yet-to-be-published autobiography.

Cherry Red’s dedicated UK psych imprint Grapefruit is proud to announce
the release in October of the 3CD anthology Love, Poetry and Revolution:
a journey through the British psychedelic and underground scenes
1966-1972. · Housed in a clambox with a lavishly annotated and
illustrated 36 page booklet, this important release features much rare
material, including previously unissued demo recordings by Tintern Abbey
and Blossom Toes.

Various heavyweight underground bands (The Crazy World Of Arthur
Brown, Hawkwind, The Deviants, etc) rub shoulders with acts who recorded
some of the rarest, most valuable albums of the era (Forever Amber,
Complex, Peter Howell & John Ferdinando), while the box also
includes a number of subterranean bands - Middle Earth regulars Jade
Hexagram, Neon Pearl, Respect and others – who failed to release
anything during their lifetime. ·

Embracing psychedelic pop (The Mirage, Jason Crest, Shy Limbs,
Crocheted Doughnut Ring etc), the burgeoning progressive rock scene (T2,
Czar, Fat Mattress) and acid folk (the likes of Simon Finn and Mark
Fry), Love, Poetry and Revolution draws on a number of catalogues,
including Beacon (The Fut, Information, pre-Damned act Taiconderoga),
the Vic Keary stable and various collector labels (Sunbeam, Acme, Tenth
Planet/Wooden Hill) to give a fascinating, all-embracing overview of
what was a tumultuous few years in British pop/rock history.

• Between 1968 and 1970, some of the finest, most obscure British psychedelic pop singles of the era escaped on the Spark label, the newly-inaugurated recording arm of long-established publishers Southern Music.

• Recorded in the basement studio of the company’s Denmark Street premises, these tracks often featured the same cabal of musicians and songwriters, leading to a homogenous in-house style that perfectly encapsulates the late 1960s British pop-psych studio sound.

• The best of Spark’s impressive roster is now collected on CD for the first time on Hello Everyone: Popsike Sparks from Denmark Street 1968-70, which assembles highly-prized, highly-priced 45s from pre-Rare Bird band Fruit Machine, Gene Latter, post-Sorrows outfit the Eggy, the New Generation (subsequently to become the Sutherland Brothers), the Dennis Wheatley-inspired Icarus and both sides of the magnificent and astonishingly rare single by Sir Ching I (only one stock copy known to exist). Also included are exquisite Brit popsike singles from Timothy Blue, Just William, both sides of the superb John Carter/Russ Alquist collaboration ‘The Laughing Man’/‘Midsummer Dreaming’ and two sensational offerings from Eartha Kitt during her brief and unlikely immersion in late Sixties hippy chick chic.

• Crammed with vintage three-minute pop tunes, and with a lavish 16-page booklet that features rare photos, quotes and the full story behind the label, Hello Everyone is simply an essential purchase for admirers of the British psychedelic pop genre.